


Reprise

by RhetoricFemme



Category: Dark Matter - Michelle Paver
Genre: Canon Compliant, Diary/Journal, Gruhuken, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 11:38:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18249065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhetoricFemme/pseuds/RhetoricFemme
Summary: Nearly eleven years after leaving Gruhuken, the need to know more about Gus's fate is taking Jack back.Note:Rating will move fromGeneraltoExplicitin later chapters.





	Reprise

_18th November 1948_  
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

 

My Dearest Gus,

I once wrote to no one other than myself that I could never return to Gruhuken. Not even for you.

For a time I became convinced I wouldn’t, couldn’t, go back for just you. Or anything else for that matter.

What would it say for all that Eriksson sacrificed over and over again? Time. Resources. He’d be the first to deny his safeguarding others from Gruhuken involved any kind of personal valor, but let’s be honest here, Gus. He came back time and again.

Just you.

Once upon a time I told myself I wouldn’t be going back for just you.

Then I convinced myself there were others for whom I should think and not just you. A nod of respect toward all of the sacrifices everyone else didn’t have to make along the way, but did anyway. Yours included.

Just you. It doesn’t even make sense to word it like that, as in a way you’re everything. Call it an act of self-preservation, I don’t know.

Nearly a year has gone by since I started this new journal. It’s a part of my routine now, and I’ve found some form of comfort in it. Keeping track of Isaak in his old age, recording the habits and patterns of various foliage and plant life.

For the most part each entry comes out a bit dry, and definitely mundane. But these days I suppose that’s the mark of a quiet, steady life, now isn’t it? Wanting for nothing I did as a younger lad. Not for prestige or intellectual challenge. Physics is dead to me (though our conversations about it are not). Not for company, food, warmth, and not for a roof over my head. I’m also uncertain of when I decided to start addressing various entries to you, though it works to provide some bit of succor.

In some ways, nor do I want for a companion. We might not have exchanged those commitment-heavy words, but I’m certain they were felt between us. I never had anyone before, and I’ve decided to have no one after. I’d only ever been alone before you, anyway, thus it’s good enough for me.

It’s thanks to your parents I’m well again, Gus. That my body is healed, my mind right, and that I’m able to earn an income. What am I to think about that? After all of the wireless exchanges you had me send out, I’m certain you kept in touch with your parents throughout your illness.

What did you tell them about me? The stranger you sold an allure of the Arctic to, or how in no time at all I’d traded my own dreams in favor of helping to succeed in yours.

I apologized to them about that. My unrelenting need for your approval, how my own stubbornness may very well have caused your death. They wouldn’t hear anything of it, though. I came to them an undeserving survivor, was refused the opportunity to walk away anything less than a trusted friend and colleague to their son. Your mother and father in front of me, and Algie at my back. That was how it happened.

Gus. Did they know?

I keep it written in my calendar to periodically send them reminders of my gratitude.

 


End file.
